Poultry Keepers Podcast

Coop Design Secrets – Part 1

• Rip Stalvey, Jeff Mattocks, and Carey Blackmon • Season 3 • Episode 142

Share episode

If you’ve ever wondered why some coops keep birds healthy and thriving while others create nonstop problems… this episode is your missing blueprint. Rip Stalvey, Jeff Mattocks, and Carey Blackmon break down the real factors that make or break a coop—space requirements, ventilation, run design, soil management, flock stress, and more.

Whether you’re building your first coop or improving one you’ve used for years, this conversation will help you avoid the hidden mistakes that lead to behavioral issues, respiratory problems, soil burnout, predator vulnerability, and long-term maintenance headaches.

In Part 1, you’ll learn:
• The 3 critical elements every coop must have
• How flock goals shape coop design
• Real indoor & outdoor space requirements per bird
• Why overcrowding triggers stress and weak immunity
• Managing soil health in runs and high-traffic areas
• Smart run rotation to prevent pathogen overload
• How to use gardens, cover crops, and liming to restore soil
• Coop height, roost height, and placement mistakes
• Doors, pop doors, flooring, hardware, and cleaning efficiency
• Practical examples from Florida, Texas, Oklahoma & beyond

This episode is packed with hands-on, real-world solutions from people who’ve built and rebuilt dozens of coops—from backyard setups to pasture-based systems.

Next week: Coop Design Secrets – Part 2
We’ll dive deeper into roost systems, ventilation specifics, predator protection, and layout tips that make caring for your birds easier year-round.

If you love learning, improving your setup, and raising healthier, happier birds… you’re in the right place.

Watch, learn, and subscribe for more poultry wisdom every week.
#PoultryKeepersPodcast #PoultryKeepers360 #BackyardChickens #ChickenCoops #CoopDesign #PoultryHealth #Homesteading #RaisingChickens #ChickenRunDesign #PoultryTips #SmallFlockKeeping #HeritagePoultry 

You can email us at - poultrykeeperspodcast@gmail.com
Join our Facebook Groups:

Poultry Keepers Podcast -
https://www.facebook.com/groups/907679597724837
Poultry Keepers 360 - - https://www.facebook.com/groups/354973752688125
Poultry Breeders Nutrition - https://www.facebook.com/groups/4908798409211973

Check out the Poultry Kepers Podcast YouTube Channel -
https://www.youtube.com/@PoultryKeepersPodcast/featured

Alex:

Welcome to the Poultry Keepers Podcast. In this episode Rip Stallvee, Jeff Mattocks, and Carey Blackmon let you in on the secrets to designing a good coop. So let's get started.

Rip Stalvey:

The three things that's going to make or break chicken coops is space inside the coop itself, air exchange and coop location. And by the end of tonight's show, you'll have an idea about how many minimum square feet per bird you. How much opening areas you need for ventilation, how many square inches or square feet, and where to place a coop for drainage shade and predator control. So if you're ready, we are ready. So why don't we start with flock goals and you heard us talk about goals in the past, but. These are also important when we're doing building a chicken coop. You need to determine what's the purpose of your flock. Are you just got'em for egg layers or for meat birds? Are they show birds? Are they, is it a breeder coop? Is it a brooder coop, or is it a grow out coop? All of that can change the coop just a little bit. You also need to take into consideration your geographic location. What are your average high and low temperatures? They're not the same for everybody. It's definitely not a one size fits all thing. What's your average rainfall now here in Florida? We get a right. Good bit of the folks I know out west don't get all that much rain, but we have problems here with the rain puddling and the birds getting in it and it just makes a bit of a mess. And think about your prevailing wind directions. Is your coop in an urban area, suburban area, or a rural area? You gotta think about potential neighbor conflicts from noise or odors if you're in a tight situation. And you wanna be sure to check for any state and local regulations or ordinances before you start building.

Carey Blackmon:

Yes. Because where? Okay, so where I live in one area of town, you cannot have a chicken at all in the town limits. Like none, no poultry, like they're all forbidden. And I've seen people go to city council uproar and they tell'em that they could move or they can get rid of their birds. They keep it simple for'em. Go up the road 15 minutes and you can have to six hands in your neighborhood. I live right? Almost dab in the middle, but I'm not in anybody's city or town limits, and I can have whatever I want and it's all within 15 minutes of each other.

Rip Stalvey:

It used to be that way here that I could do whatever I wanted to do, but the county's now passed a regulation that on the property I have, I could have up to 10 hens, but no rooster. Which didn't make me very happy, but that's life. Deal with it and go with the flow. Think about what kind of coop you want and the coop you need. Do you want an enclosed, fully enclosed coop? We couldn't do that here in Florida just because it gets so bloom and hot and humid here that in the south, those fully enclosed coop. They look nice, but man, they're rough on birds. Do you want something more of an open air construction a movable tractor on pasture? Will you have an attached run to the coop? All of those factor into this, and I think. Once you meet the bird's basic requirements for floor space and ventilation the appearance of the coop is really secondary because you can configure it most any way you want to within reason. But Jeff, let's talk a little bit about minimum indoor space and run space and all that kind of stuff. What's your thoughts?

Jeff Mattocks:

The numbers I came up with over the years of doing this is the comfort. Of a hen or any, and now this depends on the size of the foul, but let's say your average large foul type bird, four square feet of indoor living space and at least 10 square feet of outdoor run area. And every time I push those numbers closer together, when the chicken math don't work and people have a few too many. It's just, I'm just waiting for a problem to show up. It's just a matter of time. People say I've been doing it for years. Okay. It's just, wait your turn. But, they gotta have their space. I had lots of space when we had our flock of 25, over the years Outback and. I saw all kinds of behavioral issues, right? And they were, so they would segregate, they would pack, hunt, they would, pick on the weak bird. They got bored, right? If they don't have enough space, they get bored and they look for an excuse to be an idea.

Carey Blackmon:

A lot like teenagers

Jeff Mattocks:

living creatures weren't made to live in compact spaces.

Rip Stalvey:

No. And Jeff, I know one thing, and y'all were talking about it in your show on poultry diseases and all that, but when you get birds packed into a particular space that stresses the birds and that causes project, just in case the folks didn't get to see that show. What were some of the things that, what kind of stresses can you expect to see when you start crowding your birds?

Jeff Mattocks:

Usually the first thing is pecking each other, right? Like they'll be. They'll be pecking at each other's tails at each other's back of their head. Could be pecking at the saddle area. So I tend to see pecking first. Eventually at some point you start seeing like nest nesting box competition, which is not good because look. For some strange reason the average laying hand wants to lay her egg at 10:00 AM Now look, I understand that varies. It'll vary with age, it'll vary with a lot of things. They paid grad students to sit and pay attention to when ahead. Laser egg.

Speaker 4:

Yeah.

Jeff Mattocks:

And the average they have nothing else to do, right? They're right. They're paying a hundred grand for an education. They might as well sit there and. But the average hand wants to layer egg at 10:00 AM Okay. Yeah. Everything becomes a competition, whether it's feeder space, living, space brew a nesting space, whatever, right? But I don't think people realize, they don't necessarily pick up on those signs of stress in their chickens. And then if you're not looking or paying attention, you won't, but, know that when the stress level goes up, their immune system goes down, they go hand in hand. So the more stress you got in your yard or in your coop or your whatever, right? The weaker the immune system's functioning,

Rip Stalvey:

it's always amazed me. How little it can take to stress out a flock of chicken. Sometimes

Jeff Mattocks:

I don't know that everybody sees those signs of stress. I don't know that everybody picks up on or sees those symptoms of stress. Because they can display in a lot of different ways. Yeah. Just, if you don't have your bucket time, if you don't, if you don't flip that bucket over and sit there and. Pay attention to'em, behavioral differences on a daily basis because you'll see behavioral patterns somewhat to each breed and Yeah, but, and when you see a change in those behavioral patterns, then you know, that's an early indicator of a sign of stress. Now is it an illness? Is it crowding? Is it air quality? Is it. If you don't have enough space, you're not gonna maintain the proper air quality, right? So how long till the respiratory disease shows up? If you don't have enough space, you have too much manure loading, right? You have too much back bacteria buildup in the soil and you got, and that depletes your air quality, but it also sets up for. A not clean environment, right? And a check-in is not gonna help itself, but scratch the ground and look for something right? And it's just too hard to keep it clean, right? Keep it clean to the level. It should be clean. And unless you're like cleaning it out daily and you're like the perfect housekeeper, it's gonna catch up to you at some point.

Rip Stalvey:

Jeff, let's say we've got a coop, but we want to put a run on that coop. What's a good gauge? Square foot wise,

Jeff Mattocks:

Per bird, for that six, let's, I'm gonna say for an average like six pound bird. Put you in the middle of the large foul, lower end. That 10 square foot is where we wanna be and the bigger the bird, the bigger the space. All right. Yeah, so if you're working with some of the really big end of the large foul you're gonna be wanting more like 12 to 14 square feet of space out there to keep that bird happy. Not stressed, you're still not gonna manage grass, you're still not gonna keep things the way you want it to be. In a perfect world, you would have a centralized coop area, for nesting and for roosting at night. And that would be your four to five square foot. And ideally, if a person had four runs off of that with the right square footage, they could go in there and reseed that. They could go in there, they could line it, they could reed it, they could let something grow and they could move. Every week to a new run space. And by the time they got back, they would have newly germinated, something growing there. You gave the soil a rest where, the good bacteria could catch up to the bad bacteria and get everything balanced out again. And a somewhat clean environment, but, multiple years. And I saw this firsthand in a larger farm in Texas, right after 10 years of running poultry across the same field, he had to give it a rest. He could not get ahead of the pathogens, right? So he gave it a five year break of no chickens, right? And they just harvested the forage off of it and exported that because they had so much nutrient buildup. You have no way of exporting, not only the nutrients coming out in the manure, but ever letting the bacteria in the soil rebalance themselves. And people don't think about that, right? They, somehow you gotta give it a chance to, decompose, do what it needs to do, let the ground heal itself a little bit and transfer of nutrients.

Carey Blackmon:

So that brings up a question for that. I have Jeff.

Jeff Mattocks:

Okay.

Carey Blackmon:

So let's say I'm curious if I've had too many chickens in one spot for too long. If I get if I dig down an inch or two, grab some soil, stick it in a baggie, and use the lab sheet that y'all have on the for trail website. Send it off to them. Can you look at the results and be like, oh man, you got too much, blah, blah, blah. Yeah. You need to move your chickens for a while. Yeah,

Jeff Mattocks:

we do that all the time actually. People will send in soil tests and we can tell exactly where there's been too much manure applied to the soil. As you start seeing the phosphorus levels, the potassium levels, the sodium levels, all those things are like going off the charts on the really high range. And we just gotta give it a chance to, we gotta give it a break. We just,

Carey Blackmon:

so that's not something you can like, put anything on to help or anything like that. You just gonna have to give it a break.

Jeff Mattocks:

Doing the liming between, periodically two, three times a year helps. It keeps things under control. Okay. But after about 10 years, depending on your birds per square foot kind of spacing, after about 10 years of being in the same location nothing's gonna grow there. You just, you've burned it up with all the nitrogen and all the excess nutrients. Nothing's gonna want to grow there except for some really ugly weeds. And so you got two choices. One, you can come in there and you can skim off the top three inches of soil and replace it with something. And that's like starting over.

Carey Blackmon:

Or say, then you gotta tear your, all your fences up, right? You gotta move your fences so you can get the equipment in there to do. Yep. So I'm not doing that with a shovel.

Rip Stalvey:

And another thing that I've noticed, and I see this a lot, particularly around poultry coops, where they let the birds out, but there is a tremendous buildup and a compaction caused by manure and if the birds are fed outside, spilled feeding and all that stuff. And it, it's almost like concrete.

Jeff Mattocks:

It can be depending on your soil type.

Rip Stalvey:

Yeah.

Jeff Mattocks:

You're gonna see it worse in clay type soils than you will in like your sands in Florida. In Florida you've got more time before it will become like that. It just depends on what your starting soil type is. But if you're on a dense clay like we have up here yeah. Or, even out Oklahoma way, some of that soil's pretty play. It's, once it gets, starts getting manure on it and getting moisture on it. And, while you don't think about the pounds per square inch, right? A chicken's foot is not really that big. Okay? And repeated in the same location. So if you're not moving your feeders and you're not moving your wattles on a regular basis. You're gonna have those areas of compaction too much manure dropped in one spot, that sort of thing. And, but, we set up our coops for our convenience, not for long term health of the Bird. Nobody really thinks about it. And. People don't move their feeders and wattles, right?'cause they're hanging or they're in they're put in a fashion that they're not easy to keep mobile

Rip Stalvey:

or they're convenient to get into just by opening the gate.

Carey Blackmon:

Yeah. Yeah. And just attune to what you said about it getting hired. That's the reason. I've joked a couple times about a rotor tiller, but I actually do that. I'll do that once a year. I'll go in with a rotor tiller, I'll get all the birds out of the pen, put them in one that's fresh, done.'cause I do keep an empty pen and I'll till it up really good. Lime it, till it, lime it, till it lime it, throw some sand in it till it, I do that a few times and then throw some pea moss on top of it. Before I put birds back in it, but when I first get it, there's been times that I've had to use a pick to initially break the dirt. The, my tiller is it's little. The thing don't weigh 20 pounds and it just, it'll bounce and bounce, but the dirt will be so hard that it won't go through it. But since I've started every summer. Tilling it and going through that process where, I'll do it three times with lime and then put a layer of sand till that end, and then I will put peat moss on it. I've noticed a big difference in the health of the birds, which I didn't have sick birds before, but they're a lot more. Perky or upbeat or whatever. They've come up a level.

Jeff Mattocks:

Yeah.

Carey Blackmon:

They're a lot less stressed. And that's just from making that one change to the dirt.

Jeff Mattocks:

You're gonna have less bumble foot, you're gonna have less foot issues in general. Yeah. But they're gonna be happier on loose soil than they are hard compacted soil. Just because they want to kick and scratch and, that's what they wanna do. So

Rip Stalvey:

Ingrid Vincent has a comment here and a question, or has a question really this is a good time to talk about it. Does that apply to pastured birds to the tenure timeframe? She's talking about,

Jeff Mattocks:

It and that though the operation that I was talking about was pastured, but it was using the same 10 acre field and it would run. Large coops across it, five or six times in a year. It can eventually catch up, but it depends on it depends on the stocking density and how frequent the birds are on there, right? So it can, that can apply to a pastured poultry operation or a movable, a movable poultry operation, eventually, but. It's rare to see that happen, right? Most people moving their birds a around their yard or their fields or whatever, only see the benefit of it, right? Yeah. That was a unique situation, like I said, down in Texas, just north of Dallas, where they just continually beat on one field. It was convenient. They had all the infrastructure, it's where they wanted to be and the guy was raising 80,000 birds a year on that 10 acres, right? So it's, for a few years. So it was like

Carey Blackmon:

rollers that were highly densely populated inside of a tractor. Yeah.

Jeff Mattocks:

They still had good square footage. They had one and a half square foot per bird and they were moved daily. But still 80,000

Carey Blackmon:

birds on 10 acres when

Jeff Mattocks:

you go across the same strip of land. Yeah. For 10 years. You get to a point where the soil can't take any more nutrients. Just not gonna it can't deal with one more bird dropping. And even in some of the people who keep'em in cages on the ground, other poultry people that we work with, those birds that have just been in that one place for so long, nothing's gonna grow there for a long time. Or it's gonna be some really noxious weed that you can't manage

Rip Stalvey:

right. Chris has got a good comment here. My ultimate plan is to have rotating runs and using the old run as a garden space each year.

Jeff Mattocks:

That is an excellent idea. And in fact, earlier I was gonna say, if people could figure out a way to put their flock where their garden space is for the winter, right? So if they had a, if they had their run where their garden was putting the chickens out there to scratch through whatever's left of the previous year's crops in the garden. Put down, they would get a lot off of that. They would get a lot off of that, right? But it does wonderful things for the soil by aerating it, right? Putting down the fresh manure and so on. And if you keep the feeder moving around, it's. But you can either bring the garden to where the chickens were, or you can take the chickens to where the garden were was. Either way it works, right? If you can set it up that way. But now the garden is excellent.

Carey Blackmon:

Will the garden use some of the excess minerals that get added to the ground with a manure?

Jeff Mattocks:

Oh yeah. It'll use all of them. Nice. He'll have an excellent garden. So as soon as the chickens come off, you lime it to neutralize some of the acids from the manure aspect. And if you don't, if you're not gonna garden it right away, put a cover crop on it and, so it can absorb all those excess nutrients, primarily the nitrogen from the chicken manure. Then, then the next spring or whenever you're ready, you till that under and you're gonna have a fabulous garden. There's no doubt about it. But

Rip Stalvey:

I had a friend a good way. I'm sorry. Go ahead. That's

Jeff Mattocks:

a good way to export nutrients, right? For everything you harvest, you take outta there, you eat or you sell or you whatever. And it goes to a different place. But

Rip Stalvey:

I had a friend that ran his chickens where the garden was over winter. And he said by doing that, he pretty soon noticed that he wasn't having near the problem with insect pest in his gardens as he used it. Hundred percent. Yep.

Carey Blackmon:

Oh yeah. They probably dig, find them and eat them. Yeah. The only insects he has is new ones that found the garden after the chickens got out of it.

Jeff Mattocks:

Yeah. They're scratching. They're looking for the larva and anything, and a lot of those insects over winter in. The plant residue that's left behind from the garden, right? Oh yeah. While there is no plant residue, you put a bunch of chickens in there. There's no plant residue left in the spring. Yeah, it's not gonna last. And so they've got it totally torn up, tilled up and composted while they're looking for all those bugs. But,

Carey Blackmon:

but the only thing better that you could do would be put some pigs in there.

Jeff Mattocks:

If you had, if you ran a couple pigs right behind the chickens, they'd finish up whatever the chickens didn't. And if

Carey Blackmon:

you did that, you wouldn't even have to till it.

Jeff Mattocks:

No. If you got the right, if you got the right pigs they'd tiller up for you. Absolutely. Now we're talking like homesteaders here, not poultry breeders, but that's all right. It can work together.

Carey Blackmon:

But, if we get people to thinking about every possibility, it's better for the chicken, the, because they're also self-correcting the negative that goes in the ground from the chickens by moving them and digging it up and repurposing.

Jeff Mattocks:

We've lost a lot of the old ways. Like when my grandfather was a farmer, he used the pigs behind the cows or he used the pigs to clean up the chicken coop. And he didn't have pigs all year long. He had'em when he kn'em. So you get your pigs in the spring when the cows went to pasture. Then you put the pigs in on the pen pack where the cows were. And they turn it into compost. Then in the fall, when the cows come back to the barn, you have a lot less to clean up, right? Your pigs are finished. So they go to the butcher shop in October, right? And then you get it all cleaned out and freshened up for the cows. And life is good. The animals on a farm all work together. They all have a purpose and a synergy that, that they work. With each other. And when we lost sight of that, where a farmer only raises chickens, or only raises pigs, or only raises beef, we've really lost our way. And, our environment on our piece of land doesn't want to deal with only one animal's destruction and manure. It really wants to deal with multiple species. And that's where I think a lot of the homesteaders really have a great opportunity, to make that happen. Yep. But everybody eats pig. Not everybody eats pig. And I feel sorry for'em somewhat, but I'm happy because it keeps it pig down for me. That's right. Yeah. More for me.

Rip Stalvey:

Okay. We talked about space. Let's talk about doors, floors, hardware and cleaning efficiency. That seems to be an afterthought when a lot of folks build a coop. They don't take into consideration is it gonna be easy to care for? And I know, Jeff, that this has been a year or so ago, you posted a video of our friend out in Texas. Yeah.

Jeff Mattocks:

Adesa Texas. Yeah Carol Wilson and I had suggested to her, right? So you lay down a billboard, tarp on the bottom, perfectly clean floor. But then if you lay down another heavy vinyl billboard, tarp on top of that, right? And then put your bedding on that. So when you're ready to clean, she has a flap door on the end of the hen house. She can lift that up and she can pull all the bedding out at one time.

Rip Stalvey:

That video was slick. She just picked it up and took off with it and it was clean as a whistle. Yeah, just that fast. Yeah.

Jeff Mattocks:

And I stole that idea from the folks down in Florida, pastured Life Farm. Because their brooder is set up the same way, so they got the vinyl tarp down, then they got one on top of it. And, then he's got a winch on the back of the brooder. So when he transports the birds to the field on his way back, he stands back there with a hand winch and he can unload his brooder manure and bedding in the field. So he's got his youngest son driving the tractor in first gear, just above idle speed, and he stands back there and he cranks it out, where he wants it in his field. And, so the cleanup is 99% complete before he gets back and sets it up for the next brewer, next set of chickens. So

Rip Stalvey:

I think it's just looking at things with the critical eye about how can you improve the process. And I know, and I'm guilty of not doing that like I should sometimes. And I'm pretty sure everybody else has had a run in with that. Coop, construction, coop height. Jeff, what's your thoughts? I know people down here. I've seen coop's 24 inches high, four foot high, three foot high, eight foot high.

Jeff Mattocks:

You know what, if it's a coop, if I'm building the coop, it would be nothing less than seven or eight foot high. Because depending on the weight of my bird or the breed, I want that roost bar at least three feet off the ground. Okay. Even if I have to build tier, for a really heavy breed to get up there, I may put one at a foot, two foot, et cetera, as a ladder for'em to get up there. But I want'em up of a good three feet off the ground, three to four, and lighter breeds want to be higher. Especially if you got cold, wet, time of year, kind of what you're having in there now, you're a little cooler than usual. But if I can get a bird's feet off of cold, we ground on a really good roost, they're gonna be a whole lot healthier. A whole lot healthier.

Rip Stalvey:

And we're gonna get into roost a lot more in detail on the next show, but it's more than just sticking a pole in there for them to roost on for them to be happy and healthy.

Speaker 4:

Oh yeah.

Rip Stalvey:

Let's see. Don had a comment. Wanted to know if I could repost that video link in the group again. Don, lemme see if I can find it. And if I can, I'll certainly do that for you. I, and, i've got a comment here that I have seen a coop someone built that had a cutout at the bottom of the wall that you can remove and push the bedding right out with a broomer shovel. I know they used to do that on a lot of old poultry coops. Some of'em had dropping boards under the pan and they could scrape all that out and just shove it right out the Yep. Clean out hole there.

Carey Blackmon:

I built a brooder that's four foot tall, eight foot wide. It's got two, two sections, so each section's four foot by, it varies from 14 inches to 18 inches tall because I also raise quail and turkeys. I needed a little more room. But the way I did it is the lip that holds my bedding in, I can pullet out and it just sits in a little wood channel. I can pull that piece out and I found a hoe. I wanna say it's 24 inches, 30 inches, something like that, which is perfect sized. Just reach in there, do like this, rake'em out. They go into my gorilla cart. And it's clean, whole lot easier than cleaning one that you have to dig the stuff out of.

Jeff Mattocks:

Yeah. Work smarter, not harder. That's right. Yep.

Rip Stalvey:

Absolutely. Let's see, we've got a thought. We had another question or comment here and I don't see it now. I'm still trying to get back into the groove of how to run this thing. Y'all. I'm sorry for, I'm fumbling through this. No, you're doing good. What about pop doors or doors for the chicken so you don't have to open up the whole coop front?

Jeff Mattocks:

I don't personally have any firsthand experience with them. There's a bunch of automatic, like electric or battery driven doors out there. Most of what I hear is good feedback. I would personally want one that so some on dust to dawn, right? So based on the light outside they activate on their own. I don't know. I think personally I would want one on a timer so I can set the time that the door opens and closes. Now it needs to be, and that's for a delayed start in the morning. Okay. Pretty much you don't want the door to close until, 30 minutes, 30 to 45 minutes, after dark, at least 30 minutes after true dark, about one hour after sunset. So all the birds get back in'cause you always got the straggler. But it is a good security, it is a good security setup to keep predators possible. Predators out. Yeah, I, I think they're a good idea, but

Rip Stalvey:

Sue says she has pop doors and she loves them. Yep. She said critters can't get in the edge, drops past the frame, so yeah, pretty good security.

Alex:

This brings us to the end of this episode. Come back next week and we'll finish our discussion of Coop Design Secrets.

Head Shot

John Gunterman

Co-host
Head Shot

Mandelyn Royal

Co-host
Head Shot

Rip Stalvey

Co-host